Portland, ME

March 2014

Eli Cayer isn’t just a fermentor. He’s a Mainer, slaking Mainer thirsts with local products and feeding into the Maine community well beyond the realms of food and drink. In 2010, Cayer founded the Urban Farm Fermentory, a now 10,000-square-foot space that houses a community market and features Maine producers, artists, and artisans—all while Cayer’s Fermentory puts out beverages that emphatically represent his surroundings (think 100 percent Maine hard ciders that have been wild-fermented). They also earned him a 2014 StarChefs.com Coastal New England Risign Stars Award.

Finding instant success with his meads, Cayer moved on to fermenting both ciders and kombucha, producing one of the last and best exemplars of the slightly higher ABV style. When he’s not brewing, Cayer’s community-oriented Fermentory hosts workshops on beverage-making and lacto-fermentation. Ready to welcome a vegan bakery, an organic ice-pop maker, a pie company from Brooklyn, and an apothecary and creamery, Cayer has plans to grow his space with a new tasting area and a 1,500 square feet greenhouse—to better harvest Maine flavor.